


Come to Talk to You Again

by ButterflyGhost



Series: City on a Hill [4]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gender-Neutral Runner Five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 12:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11184699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: The diagnosis is not good.





	Come to Talk to You Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluehaven4220](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluehaven4220/gifts).



> Spoilers up to Season Six Mission Thirteen.

Veronica’s thrilled; her eyes are shining. Her hands flash back and forth, fingers darting and dancing as she describes the imagined spaces of my damaged brain.

 

I don’t look at the readings on screen, but I can’t look away from those hands. She’s drawing a map for us, tracing a complex series of patterns in the air. I can see it clearly, the maze of neural pathways and tangled ganglia in my head, twisted and knotted into an ugly, thorny fortress, like the dark impenetrable forests of fairy tale. Moonchild hunkers at the centre of it like a big squat spider.

 

_‘That’s not a nice metaphor, Five. Not that there’s anything wrong with spiders. But what did I ever do to you?’_

 

_What did she ever -_

 

Rage rushes up in me, sharp and cold, and my jaw is clenched so hard it hurts. I am not going to respond to Moonchild. I refuse.

 

Veronica is still holding forth.

 

“This is remarkable technology,” she enthuses. “Moonchild has successfully downloaded her personality - well, a version of her personality - into - oh - I suppose you could call it a wet-wired mainframe. There’s no more sophisticated computer than the human brain, and that she was able to insert herself into one as a programme like this is incredible.” She beams at me. Her enthusiasm would almost make me smile back if I didn’t feel so sick. “And she hasn’t even damaged the host programme too much. Five, your personality is intact, and your executive function is hardly damaged at all. I mean, you had us fooled for _months._ Apart from the fugue states, you’re almost normal. I wonder if -”

 

“Veronica.” Thank God. Finally. Maxine’s voice cuts off the monologue like a sharp, flat slap. “Stop talking.”

 

“What?” Veronica looks bewildered. “What’s wrong?” There’s silence for a moment, then Veronica ‘gets it.’ Her face falls. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. Five. I’m sorry.”

 

“Five,” Sam says on my headset. “Are you alright? It’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure out a way to get Moonchild out of you -”

 

 _‘Oh no you’re not,’_ Moonchild says, smug. _‘I told you, Five. We need each other now. We’re symbiotically entwined. Yin and Yang. If they take me out, you’ll just twist up and die. It won’t be pretty.’_

 

“Five?” Maxine is gazing at me with concern. Kytan and Tom are focussed on me too; I feel like a specimen on one of Maxine’s slides. Kytan is looking at me with what appears to be suspicion but could just be his usual confusion. Tom’s eyes are intense, but the rest of his face is mild and blank. He is standing back and giving me space. Maybe he understands better than the rest how I feel, the odd one, the broken one. If anybody would understand it, he would. I don’t need sympathy. I don’t need crowding. Or maybe it’s not understanding. Maybe he’s just got the good sense not to trust me. “Sam’s right.” Maxine’s voice cuts back in. “We’ll find a cure.”

 

Veronica gives a tiny shake of her head, a micro-gesture, then bites her lip as she sees me notice. Inside me, Moonchild smiles. _‘She’s a smart girl, that one. She reminds me of me at that age.’_

 

“Five...” Sam is still talking, but suddenly I can’t bear to hear it. I pull off the headset and push my way towards the door. Someone puts their hand on my shoulder; I shake it off, get through in time. I throw up just outside their sightline.

 

Small mercies.

 

***

 

It stopped raining about an hour ago, and a watery sun is filtering through the grime on the window. I keep meaning to wash the window, but somehow it never seems the most important chore on the list. There is more than enough to keep a person busy at Abel, even between running missions back and forth.

 

Now, though, I’m lying on my side and have been for as long as it took a spider to rebuild her web after the rain washed her old one away. I don’t feel like running any missions, let alone washing my cubicle window. I will be running soon; I know that. When it comes down to it, I will pull myself together and do what the community needs me to. The ‘higher ups’ at Abel have decided that I am still to be trusted. It is strange to think of my friends being ‘higher ups,’ but somehow these days they are running things. Maxine and Paula have status as doctors, so their elevation makes sense. I am not sure if Jodie and Sam realise that they are now, to all intents and purposes, the inner government of Abel. If they do know they wear their authority lightly.

 

I wonder where I stand in the hierarchy of Abel. Head of Runners, yes, but I can’t say that I am universally trusted. I will always be the person who sank the Laetitia Greenwald, who killed all those people. Oh yes, I was under Moonchild’s control, and so was half the country, but there are whispers that Moonchild was too fond of me, that I meant more to her than her other ‘people.’ That maybe I enjoyed myself a little too much.

 

Maybe I did. I can’t even remember - or won’t.

 

I won’t.

 

For now, I’m watching through my little grimy window as a male blackbird flies back and forth. When he flies from the bottom left corner of my window to the top right, he is bearing scraps of paper and fluff. When he flies back down from top right to bottom left his beak is empty. He snaps at the spider once, and she scurries out of his reach into some crack or other. He turns back to his task. I’m trying to remember whether this is the time of year for eggs or for hatching. Whichever it is, the bird is obviously preparing or maintaining his nest. I try to picture the mother bird - brown, female blackbirds are brown - and don’t know if she would be out hunting for grubs and worms or if she would be brooding on her eggs.

 

_'You only have to ask, Five. I know the answer.’_

 

I am still not talking to Moonchild.

 

The blackbird flies by again, this time with a tuft of what looks like human hair. I wonder whether he is looking after his own chicks or whether a cuckoo has been introduced to his nest and supplanted the other birds. When I was a child, I remember finding three broken eggs at the bottom of a tree with the remains of baby robins scattered about. My mother told me to leave them, that I couldn’t do anything for them. When I went back later, they were gone. A cat must have taken them, or some other carnivore. A few days later I caught my first sight of the cuckoo and climbed a neighbouring tree so that I could watch it. It started life as a bald wizened creature that seemed nothing but mouth. Over the weeks I witnessed the thing outgrow its unsuspecting ‘not’ parents, eventually dwarfing them as it demanded more and more. Then one day it was gone. I acknowledge now a guilty disappointment that I couldn’t continue to watch events unfold, along with a sense of relief that the sickening spectacle was over. Before I climbed down from my vantage point the final time, I tied a string around a tree branch with the wish that next year the robins would keep their chicks.

 

I never did find out.

 

Thinking of it now, I wonder if that unsettling childhood experience, which I so relentlessly insisted on witnessing, was some form of prophecy. I wonder how long Abel will shelter me before Moonchild engorges herself to the point where I have no personality at all.

 

 _‘Five, that’s not how it works.’_ Moonchild sounds hurt. _‘You know I wouldn’t harm you. I just needed somewhere to live, that’s all. And I trust you. You always loved me, you know.’_

 

I scrunch my eyes shut and hate her.

 

_‘I asked you at the time, and you said yes.’_

 

Well, of course I did. She was controlling every part of me; I had no free will at all.

 

 _‘Oh, Five,’_ she says, _‘you’ll come around. We can be happy again, you and I.’_

 

It starts raining again outside. Not heavily enough to destroy the spider’s web, but the blackbird has stopped coming back and forth. Maybe he’s hunting the worms that will come up out of the earth now that the ground is getting soaked again. I look at the glass and the grey streaks running down it and wonder how long it’s been since anyone washed it at all. How had I not noticed just how dirty and run down everything was?

 

The same way we all miss the obvious, I suppose. You can look at a thing for a long time and not see it. It took forever for me to run up against the brick wall of fact. Even then I wouldn’t see it.

 

I see it now. Moonchild ruined me. I’m not even me anymore. I’m a corrupted programme, and she’s the virus. One day a subroutine is going to kick in and I’ll - what? I’ll be weaponised.

 

They must have guessed. They _should_ have guessed. They’re not idiots, after all. Not idiots, maybe, but they _are_ in an echo chamber; they only hear what they want to hear.

 

I tried to warn them. I tried to tell them what she said, that I’m stuck with her. It went badly. Moonchild’s voice, so comfortable in my head: _‘Oh, what lovely amygdalae you have, Five, they are so responsive. What happens if I push here? Oh dear, I hope I didn’t dump too much norepinephrine and cortisol into your system – breath, Five. That’s better, yah? Oh, no need to tell them what happened. That’s our secret. This? Just tell them it was a panic attack. Don’t make me do it again. There, there, Five. That’s right. Deep breaths. It will pass.’_

 

It passed, and I’m still lying with my face to the wall and its little window, playing dead and wishing it wasn’t just play. Not that Moonchild would give me such an easy way out. It’s in her interest to keep me breathing. If I'm logical, I can admit that it’s not in anyone else’s interest. Not even mine, because I’m tired. Tired, and angry, scared and surrounded. Surrounded by people who don’t trust me. Why would they? I’m the Trojan Horse; I brought the enemy right into the heart of Abel.

 

They are right to be afraid. I am not stupid, and I am not deaf. I can hear what people are saying about me. If I can hear it so can she.

 

Outside the cubicle I hear voices approaching, arguing.

 

“We can’t trust Five.”

 

“Look, it’s not Five’s fault. It’s not like Five asked for Moonchild Syndrome –”

 

“Are you sure? Five was awfully loved up with Moonchild.”

 

“Hey! Everyone was! For God’s sake, _you_ were. Half the country was! Mind control, remember? Are you going to blame everyone Moonchild took over?”

 

“No, no I’m not. But Five meant more to Moonchild than anyone else. And – no, Sam, let me speak. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Five didn’t ask for it. That’s not even what I meant. What I mean is, even if Five’s innocent –”

 

“Of course Five’s innocent!”

 

“Okay, Five’s innocent.”  There is a pause and a sigh. “Yes, I do know that. It’s not Five’s fault. But....”

 

“But what?” Sam’s voice has dropped, deep and dangerous, as it hardly ever is.

 

“But - just - Look, I know you haven’t told people, and I’m not going to gossip out of turn, but I’ve heard you guys talking. This isn’t just Moonchild Syndrome, is it? Five’s not just Five anymore. Five’s Moonchild. And Moonchild was the enemy, remember? Do you really want her here, right under our noses? She’s been here for years. She knows everything about us.”

 

Sam’s voice is still a low threat. “All this time and Five hasn’t let Moonchild do anything to hurt us. Five is still Five, and Five has always protected Abel.”

 

“Yeah, maybe. But maybe Moonchild’s been biding her time.”

 

“Maybe you should shut up.”

 

 _‘Maybe they both should,’_ Moonchild says in my head, and I groan. Outside my cubicle door, the voices go silent. I hear footsteps going down the corridor, then the door opens.

 

“Five?” It’s Sam. “Are you okay in there?”

 

I can’t speak, but he must see from the set of my shoulders that I heard.

 

“Hey, Five. I’m sorry you heard that. He didn’t mean anything by it –”

 

 _‘Oh, but he did,’_ says Moonchild. _‘You wait and see. He’s not the only one. They want to hurt me, and they’ll go through you to do it. You’re not safe in Abel, believe me.’_

 

I roll onto my side and look up at Sam. Just look. He can see it in my eyes, all the things that I can’t say.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not – I’m not safe. He’s right. She –”

 

 _‘Naughty, naughty! Bad Five, what did I tell you?’_ I hear myself scream – I don’t know what part of me she touched this time, but I can’t let her do it again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Oh God, stop gibbering. Sam’s got his arms around me, and I would be ashamed, but I’m rigid with fear. Moonchild’s voice is as peaceful as ever. _‘ACTH, and CRF – what lovely hormones you have, Five. Did you know that people can get addicted to their fear hormones? I’ve often wondered about you  - is that the real reason you keep on running? You’re not a hero. You’re just chasing your next high.’_

 

I can’t let her win.

 

“She – she – she said I can’t get rid of her, I need her now. She says she’s here to stay. She says –”

 

Moonchild touches a clump of neurones clustered like a spider’s web deep in my skull; there’s a blazing flash of terror, then nothing.

 

When I wake up, Sam’s still there, sleeping. He’s moved up beside me onto the bed and is in danger of falling off. I shift to give him space, and he wakes with a start.

 

“Oh, hey, Five. You’re back.”

 

He smiles at me, determined to pretend everything is normal.

 

“You hungry?”

 

I nod. I’m not hungry. I’m hollow. All my fear, courage and anger are drained out, and I don’t feel anything. I don’t dare risk speaking yet. I don’t want to attract her attention.

 

“Okay then. There should be leftovers. Come on.” He stands up and puts his hand out, pulls me up and jollies me to my feet. I don’t want to go out and eat in public, but it will invite more comment and distrust if I don’t. At least I don’t have to go alone.

 

 _‘You’re never alone,’_ Moonchild says as Sam and I step out into the corridor. _‘I’m always with you.’_

 

I grit my teeth. She might be able to stop me from talking to my friends, but she can’t make me have a conversation with her.

 

_‘Five, I’m talking to you. Why don’t you ever talk back? We used to have such great conversations.’_

 

I don’t say a word. I have at least that much control.

 

_‘Don’t you love me anymore?’_

 

I never did. I nearly tell her that, but I don’t want to give her an inch of space. She already has too much.

 

“So,” I manage, “what’s for leftovers?”

 

Sam’s face brightens. He knows I’m putting on a front, but he’s reassured by the fact that I’m trying and he’s happy to play along.

 

“Mystery stew,” he says. “It’ll be an adventure.”

 

As we walk out of the barracks I duck my head so that I don’t have to see people looking at me with suspicion. Sam puts his palm between my shoulder blades. It’s a reassuring gesture and a public one - one that says plainly that he’s my friend, he’s got my back.

 

Even if everyone else falls away, I do know that I’ll always have one friend. He shouldn’t trust me, of course he shouldn’t. The time may come when I am ousted from my nest like a robin’s egg and the cuckoo spreads her wings. Will I - she - will _she_ try to destroy my friends? They will have to turn on me or cast me out, for their own safety. I don’t blame them. I hope Sam doesn’t blame them.

 

I hope, when the time comes, that he will let me go.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Bluehaven for the title!


End file.
